Habitat implements new stock control system

Home interiors retailer Habitat has consolidated its stock taking across the UK using new Portable Data Capture Units and bespoke software from Portech Systems. Following successful completion of the UK implementation, the new system will be rolled out to Spain and potentially other European countries.

The multinational homes and interiors retailer currently runs in-house stock taking in the UK to manage over 3,500 products in approximately 100 different product typologies. To gain greater stock accountability - visibility and control of items in store - Habitat has decided to implement a new stock taking system from Portech Systems.

The implementation includes 108 multi-lingual Portable Data Capture Units [Unitech HT660]. These will enable Habitat to benefit from perpetual counts and rolling counts once the initial stock audit has been undertaken. Currently, counts are conducted on a paper check basis and the stock audit process differs from country to country. The new units and software will also improve speed and accuracy of counts as they are programmed to recognise and alert the stock auditor to skew very quickly.

With the new system, Habitat will increase productivity of stock audits as time taken for the process will be reduced and counts will occur, where possible, out of trading hours so limiting inconvenience to the store's customers. Habitat will also benefit from a higher level of reporting and visibility as the underlying PC system has also been updated to meet the company's requirements.

Implementation is already underway with a testing phase running concurrently and will be finished before the critical January stock audits in the UK . A Habitat spokesperson said: "We are confident that we will be able to transform our stock audit process to deliver strong benefits to our business down to the individual store level. The new system is more than a simple stock audit solution - it has huge potential to help us improve traceability of our products and manage our inventory more effectively at any time of the year. Store managers will be able to access real time product inventory during the order process and analyse turn levels far more accurately than the method we use today."

www.portech.co.uk

MAX BOX kiosks expand offer

CHRISTMAS shoppers can now buy luxury British food and beverage hampers, sourced from some of the country's finest independent producers, on MAX BOX kiosks' anywhere in the UK.

Felix Group plc, the company behind the venture has teamed up with Redhouse Farm Shop, on the Dunham Massey National Trust estate in Cheshire. Buying a hamper means customers can support local bakers, farmers and cheese-makers.

Hampers range in price from £20 - £85 and include treats such as handcrafted award winning Cheshire chocolates and truffles, Mrs Darlington's lemon curd from Nantwich, Franks' luxury shortbread biscuits from Herefordshire, Cartmel sticky toffee pudding from Cumbria and black bomber cheddar cheese by the Snowdonia Cheese Company.

MAX BOX kiosks are becoming an increasingly common feature in pubs, cinemas, restaurants and airport lounges throughout the UK, giving customers the chance to buy a hamper anytime, anywhere.

MAX BOX is a digital retail kiosk that offers a range of services including an ATM, photo printing, mobile top-ups, flower ordering facilities, a jukebox, games, football photos, mobile phone downloads, a Wi-Fi hotspot and web browsing.

www.themaxbox.com

Institute of Physics deploys EPoS technology

EPoS technology provider, H.I.T Solutions has been chosen by The Institute of Physics to supply their pointOne Electronic Point of Sale (EPoS) solution to automate the food ordering and stock control elements of its staff restaurant. The system replaces an inefficient manual process that was prone to errors, resulting in lost revenue. Established over 125 years ago, The Institute of Physics is a scientific membership organisation devoted to increasing the understanding and application of physics. It employs 108 staff at its headquarters in London.

Head of corporate service at The Institute of Physics, Kate Meehan comments on the reasons for selecting the new EPoS system, "Prior to installing the pointOne EPoS system we operated a manual 'cash-less' system based on handwritten chits. The restaurant staff would write down each order and then, at the end of the day, pass these details onto the accounts department who would then charge the meals to an appropriate account associated with a department, or a member of staff. However, our restaurant can get very busy, and during peak times hand-written notes would get mislaid or damaged and therefore the revenue on some of these transactions was lost altogether."

Meehan continues, "it was obvious that we needed to automate this process, therefore we approached our restaurant outsourcer and they recommended pointOne EPoS from H.I.T Solutions.

The pointOne EPoS solution provides a direct link from the restaurant to the finance office. Staff enter the details of each order into a pointOne EPoS terminal and the system automatically records all the items, updates the current stock and allocates the costs to the appropriate department or staff member.

Meehan concludes, "The pointOne EPoS solution has been a great success, all our orders are now processed correctly resulting in a 100% increase in our revenues. The staff are also much happier with the new system as its takes away the stress of keeping tabs on each piece of paper they were handling. We would highly recommend it to any organisation with similar issues to ourselves".

www.hitsolutions.co.uk

Online customer review warning

British shoppers are being warned to watch out for bogus customer reviews this Christmas as new research from YouGov reveals that customer reviews are five times more likely to influence online shoppers to part with their cash than advertising.

The study, commissioned by independent customer review service Reevoo, shows the increasing impact of shopper opinion on British online shopping habits as Britain heads towards what is predicted to be a record £42 billion e-Christmas this year.

Six out of ten people (60%) say online opinions written by consumers who have already bought a product would affect their choice of what to buy. In contrast, just 12% said they would be swayed by online advertising.

Richard Anson, chief executive of Reevoo, said: "The influence of reviews is no longer in doubt and we think it is time that regulators looked at the way that customer reviews are presented online. Are they edited? Are they legitimate? Given the influence that customer reviews have, now is the time for regulation and standards to be applied, so that customers are not misled."

The study also reveals that shoppers are beginning to wake up to the possibility of fake reviews and won't believe everything they read online. While eight out of ten (79%) are influenced by impartial ratings from shoppers who have definitely bought a product, only 14% would trust review programmes that are directly managed by retailers. More than a third (36%) of consumers are worried about the authenticity of retailer-managed customer review programmes.

Another 84% think genuine customer reviews should carry a kite mark making it clear they are from a real purchaser and fully independent of the retailer.

Reevoo collates reviews from shoppers who have genuinely bought goods from internet stores including Woolworths, Currys, the Carphone Warehouse, Dixons and the fashion website koodos. The organisation emails confirmed purchasers within a month of purchase and asks them to rate the product against a range of criteria. Reviews are not edited or used selectively. They then appear on the retailers' websites adjacent to the product.

www.reevoo.com